University of Pennsylvania THINKING URBAN SPACE February 15, 2008 Home Call for Papers Conference Program Paper Abstracts Directions and Information about Traveling to Philadelphia The University of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia	Dr. Steffen Lehmann | ‘Back to the City’, or: What makes Berlin (still) a creative city? What is it exactly that makes a city a great and creative place? In today’s globalised world, a clear-cut identity, good public space and sustainable place-making are qualities which increasingly represent the desirability for living in a city. Over the last 15 years, Berlin has transformed itself from industrial age casualty to the hub of youth art, has re-emerged as a magnet for young people, and redesigned itself as a metropolis and symbol of contemporary Europe. There is no doubt that Berlin is a cosmopolitan, forward-looking city, conscious of its status and confident about its stature. The city doesn’t need to constantly declare or self-assure about its status. Currently, Berlin attracts a ‘creative class’ who gravitate to its inspiring public space network for walking and cycling; its large number of robust, flexible buildings; and the wide range of types and sizes of its character places waiting to be occupied with fresh ideas about living and working in the inner city. Those places are well suited to new approaches to informal urban design and artistic searches for undiscovered potential, which frequently hides in the derelict, post-industrial fabric. Such ‘places not done yet’ attract the interests of artists in creating provocative, temporary interventions in urban public space. Opposed to Richard Serra's famous dictum: ‘to remove the work is to destroy the work’, these site-specific, temporary installations can stimulate and regenerate a place and lead to new perceptions and readings of ‘city’, or, as Charles Landry has put it: ‘One continuing issue is the narrowness of planners' horizons and the fact that they find it very hard to focus on desires rather than needs.’ (Landry, 1995) Since you cannot buy culture, it is not the corporate headquarters and shopping centres of Potsdamer Platz or Friedrichstrasse, but such ‘places and spaces not done yet’ that hold a promise for freedom of personal expression and individual interpretation. The euphoria of post-reunification times has long disappeared. After the fall of the Wall (1989) and the settling of the ensuing turmoil, the years 1990-2000 have become the ‘golden years’ of Berlin’s re-emergence. However, the advantages Berlin possesses today will persist only if the city manages to maintain its distinctiveness and its affordability. Following the earlier fate of Paris and Barcelona, Berlin’s affordability is likely to be ending soon and the city may stop being a desirable ‘Creative City’. With the completion of the government’s move to the new capital and the influx of a large number of bureaucrats, a phase of consolidation and mainstream consumerism has begun. Artists are being forced further out of the centre by high rents and new developments. By 2012, Berlin’s status may well have shifted to another city, probably to Istanbul or another city in Eastern Europe. back to abstracts